about the interview was not her ignorance, but the lack of interest which alone could have produced that ignorance.

at the same time, so I approach this comment with some trepidation. Nevertheless, I cannot agree that there is much wrong with vacating posse comitatus.

That law was brought into effect as part of the repudiation of radical reconstruction. After the civil war, it had been possible for a federal marshal to call upon Federal (ie. Union) troops to help to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution in the face of attempts by Southern racists to nullify the outcome of the Civil War.

Removing the effective capability of enforcing the Constitution in the South via posse comitatus ushered in Jim Crow and relegated African-Americans to a new but somehow familiar subjugation for another 90 years.

So I don't mourn the partial demise of posse comitatus on general principles, and furthermore doubt any practical difference between a standing domestic Federal force and all the state forces which are currently intended for as bad or worse purposes.

until you deal with why it was better to have posse comitatus and Jim Crow than federal troops' enforcement of freedmen's constitutional rights. Also, please, demonstrate why it's OK to have state Governors in control of in-state National Guard deployments, but not OK for the federal government to exercise similar functions.

believe that the Republican right-wing in the House voted against the bailout as part of a populist 'uprising' or in support of the 'people vs the ruling class!'

support this kind of poison?

I'm hoping that, after the election of the Obama/Biden ticket, Chris Dodd will take over leadership of the Committee; he seems to have a little less bellicose attitude on the Russia/Georgia issue as well as on the admission of Georgia and Ukraine to NATO.

to get into a very heavy session of the blame game, formerly known as the dispensation of justice.

Those who argue otherwise have first to demonstrate the absence of victims of the policies and actions at issue, an obvuisly fruitless exercise which I've never heard the advocates of that position attempt.

of the Geneva Convention which ignores the dictates of the Convention's Article Three, which requires humane treatment of all those under control of a power, regardless of whether they are represented by another signatory to the treaty or are 'legal combatants'. I don't like someone who cites the Convention as if he knows it, but doesn't cite that aspect of the treaty.

"More simplistic still is the very idea that the motives of Bush officials -- including Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld -- can be reduced to one clear and pure desire: To Protect Us."

How many times have we heard these people characterize their actions with phrases like 'Take the gloves off', which not only portray their own behaviors as without real consequence but also try to place them in the context of a just reaction to the mollycoddling of the left which preceded them and which caused the mischief which they are now correcting.

that justice need not be pursued; the administration should allow the establishment of special prosecutors in the matters of torture and the TSP. Beyond this (and considerably easier for the new administration), the government should drop it's opposition to civil suits by victims such as Maher Arar which are already in the courts.

The first order of business should be to abandon government resistance to current and future civil suits by the victims - people like Maher Arar, the completely innocent Canadian citizen kidnapped from Kennedy airport by the INS and FBI and illegally 'rendered' for torture to Syria. In these and other cases the administration should take positive steps to officially acknowledge the injustice done and should negotiate just recompense, as the Canadian government has done in the Arar case. Also, where there's evidence that specific government officials knowingly violated the law under cover of their governmental responsibilities - in the Arar case, for instance, this has been shown in Congressional hearings - the administration should also refuse to provide the involved individuals any shield against civil suit.

every time they get on and blurt out this kind thing is another hundred thousand votes against them.

in the first the U.S. wants OBL from Pakistan; in the second Afghanistan wants GWB from the U.S.

There's really no difference between the two cases. In each, the outcome depends on the terms of the extradition treaties existing between the pairs of countries - the international courts don't count independent of that. If the treaty conditions are met, then the terms of the extradition treaties are executed. If not, then there's some other kind of diplomatic outcome.

But in no case does 'rendition' - kidnapping - happen except in the lawless Bush world of yore.

I've seen a lot of remarks about this. Almost all are critical of the NYT coverage. All of them track back to (and only to) the Times obit.

Let me suggest the obvious: if the Times didn't see the very same striking connection between the treatment of the U.S. serviceman and the Muslim detainees, it would not have published the article in the first place, and none of us would have noted the event.

I didn't need the Times to spell out the contradiction in terminology used to describe the identical treatment of the two sets of prisoners. Obviously, neither did you.

"...with a Democratic President, there seems to be more Democratic and progressive support for this war..."

I think that's because much of the anti-war talk under Bush was partisan jabber using the war as an excuse, and really just amounting to carping about the obvious incompetence rather than the unjust criminality.